


Just The Dreaming

by Raphiael



Category: Clover
Genre: CLAMP, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-02
Updated: 2012-03-02
Packaged: 2017-11-01 00:17:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raphiael/pseuds/Raphiael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It must be lonely, hearing something no one else can comprehend. The breach between two-leaf and three is greater than Gingetsu had imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just The Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> Gift fic for Rethira on LJ.

 

When the air is right and the breeze is just so, Ran tilts his head ever so slightly toward the window, as if to listen for the tune of a song just barely out of reach. He seems to think Gingetsu doesn't notice, but of course he does. Gingetsu notices everything. He notices the cadence of Ran's breath, the rhythm of his delicate fingers against invisible screens, the path the wires take away from his visor and down his fragile neck while he works. And he notices, too, the way those fingers seem just a bit thinner from day to day, the way his breaths come just a touch shorter now, the way the very crown of his head is kissed just a little with silver when he swears just last month it was not.

Of course, time is short. Too short to waste with questions like that. So Gingetsu doesn't ask, and pretends he doesn't notice anything at all.

 

* * *

 

“You can't hear it, can you?” Ran asks one morning, and Gingetsu doesn't act this time.

“No,” he says honestly. “I hear. . .you. And the wind. And the people outside.” And the droning whirr of his headset, and the in-out-in of his breath, and the tick-tick-tick of the clock on the wall, counting Ran's moments with him away.

“I'm sorry. I. . . forget.”

The world must sound different to a stronger Clover, then. Gingetsu should have known. He thinks of all the things he knows Ora didn't know, remembers the snippets she caught and mentioned without realizing they were strange. Like a child's finger-painting next to the work of a master, she'd catch the colors, the shapes, almost, but never the full depth of what Gingetsu knew. To Ran, he must seem the same. Gingetsu wishes that didn't sting as much as it does.

“Can you describe it to me?”

“. . .I don't think so.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be. I don't mind.”

He does mind, of course. It must be lonely, craning his neck to hear something no one else can comprehend, something beyond the reach of all but one other. _She_ would have heard it, Gingetsu is sure. _She_ would have understood him, better than anyone, better even than his own brother, his other self. And both would understand it better than Gingetsu ever can.

Perhaps it would be better to be like Kazuhiko, and never have a clue at all.

He looks away as the sun filters through the blinds on the window and brings out the white growing in Ran's dark, thinning hair.

 

* * *

 

Ran doesn't turn to hear it anymore; instead, he stays still, always looking toward the window, his eyes following something Gingetsu is sure he'll never see.

“Don't look so sad,” he says when he finally speaks, though he doesn't look away and he might not be speaking to Gingetsu at all. He might be speaking to that thing on the winds – _in_ the winds? – or to the glass of the windowpane, the dust on the blinds.

“I'll try,” Gingetsu manages. A lie. They both know.

“I won't be gone, really. She wasn't, you know.”

His words are slow, quiet, but between them, Gingetsu hears something. A hint of windchimes – how he knows that word, he isn't sure – the soft rustle of feathers,  _real_ feathers, and the song of a bird with lungs instead of gears. The faintest whisper of a voice he almost knows, and something he thinks might be his name.

And then Ran is gone, and he thinks he hears  _her – I only want your happiness, but_ – and he knows at last the sound he can't reach. 


End file.
